WASHINGTON (TNND) — The government shutdown is lingering into the week despite the Senate approving the bill Monday night as House lawmakers that have not been in session since September are navigating widespread delays and cancellations for air travel after being called back to Washington to vote on the package to reopen the government.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told lawmakers on Monday to return to Washington “right now” due to the air traffic reductions that have caused thousands of cancellations and delays. But the earliest lawmakers will vote on the bill is Wednesday afternoon.
Johnson was confident the stopgap to fund the government through January would pass and it has President Donald Trump’s backing, decreasing the odds of GOP opposition. Most House Democrats have been outraged over the handful of Senate Democrats who negotiated and voted for the compromise, thinning the margins for the House to send the bill to Trump.
The additional day of a shutdown will have an essentially negligible monetary impact but is a final blow to what has been a major disruption to an already-struggling economy. Most of the economic losses from shutdowns are made up once the government reopens but there are still costs associated with it for the government and businesses.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated a six-week shutdown will reduce growth in the fourth quarter by 1.5%, while reopening will boost growth in next year’s first quarter by 2.2%. But the lengthy shutdown will cost about $11 billion in economic activity. A Friday report from EY-Parthenon estimated the government shutdown had already cost the economy roughly $55 billion in lost output and every additional week would have cost about $7 billion, or 0.1% of GDP.
The looming reopening of the government will restore growth, but not all of it as businesses will lose out on meals that were never ordered, purchases that were put off and lost sales that may never return over aid programs being cut off. Airlines are also facing millions in losses due to the flight cancellations that the Federal Aviation Administration said will continue until safety data reflects being able to return to full capacities.
Shutdowns, and even near-misses, also cost taxpayers funds that will not be recovered. Government agencies have to prepare shutdown plans as every shutdown approaches that requires an all-hands effort to create and carry out the contingencies.
The U.S. will also have to deal with indirect costs from the shutdown that come with poor timing. Economic data collection and releases have been stalled since Oct. 1, clouding the outlook for the Federal Reserve as it tries to keep the economy on track.
The House has been out of session since mid-September when it passed a continuing resolution funding the government into November that was never approved in the Senate amid the stalemate over health care subsidies. Lawmakers have been mostly out of town throughout the shutdown and Johnson repeatedly refused to bring them back or put the House into session to vote on one-off bills to pay troops, fund food aid benefits and other proposals.
The prolonged and unscheduled recess has frustrated lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, with some GOP lawmakers anxious to continue working on full-year spending bills and continue voting on other priorities. Committees have also lost valuable oversight time and hearings on other issues with the House on recess.
Democrats have seized on Johnson’s decision to keep the House out of session for weeks as Republicans refusing to show up to work to end the shutdown. They have also claimed the real reason Johnson was keeping the House out was not to pressure Senate Democrats into a deal but to avoid further attention being brought to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
“The Trump administration and Mike Johnson are running a pedophile protection program,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last week. “That’s what they’ve been doing, and that’s the reason why they refuse to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, for weeks now.”
A discharge petition to force a vote on mandating the full release of the federal government’s files on its investigation into Epstein is one signature away from succeeding. Grijalva, D-Ariz., has pledged to be the final signature but has not been sworn in despite winning a special election seven weeks ago. Johnson said on Monday that she will be sworn in before the vote on the bill to reopen the government.
“This can never happen again to another member-elect that is waiting in the wings because someone doesn’t want to do their job or because they’re playing politics,” Grijalva said in a video statement posted on social media.
Democrats have blasted Johnson’s repeated rejections of allowing Grijalva to be sworn out while the House is out of session as a move to derail further investigations into Epstein, who had a relationship with Trump, though the president has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Most polling has found a majority of Americans do not approve of the way the Trump administration has handled the Epstein case and the release of more files, which was a campaign promise for the president.
Drama over the Epstein files was ramping up as the House adjourned ahead of recess as the discharge petition gained traction and the House Oversight Committee met with victims and released its own batch of files, most of which were already public. Johnson has tried to argue the best strategy for dealing with Epstein is through the Oversight investigations, though that has not quelled concerns within the GOP and been flatly rejected by Democrats.